Orbital Sciences sees market beyond taking cargo to the space station

Finding funds for space startups has always been difficult. Investors all know the old joke that the best way to make a small fortune in space is to start with a large one. Several billionaires have ignored that warning to put their money on the line for commercial space developments. But for most space engineers with a great idea, getting beyond CAD (computer-aided design) is a scramble for money that can suck personal savings dry, pester government funders and angel investors to death, and hammer the crowd-sourcing web servers to the point of meltdown.

First suborbital test still on target for year-end

Atlas 5 has been a workhorse of U.S. military and civil payloads

It is a plausible approach on its face. The U.S. International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) is a detailed list of munitions no one wants to fall into the wrong hands. It includes deadly hardware up to and including nuclear weapons. In the late 1990s, it also came to include satellite components, regardless of their end use. But because the State Department export-licensing bureaucracy proved more difficult to manage than the Commerce Department counterpart, the U.S. satellite industry found itself hobbled at the very time it faced growing competition abroad.

As U.S. loosens satellite export rules, suppliers own up to violations